I once had a friend tell me “don’t shit where you eat.” It was in response to me dating someone within the stand up community, meaning that I shouldn’t date in a community I’m trying to be taken seriously.

I mean, I married that guy I started dating, so I guess he was wrong.

Then again, I’ve divorced that guy I started dating, so maybe he was right.

The point is, the phrase itself sounds like it has merit. I mean, literally shitting where you eat may seem efficient, but not a good idea.

No one told that to Magic Toilet Cafe.

Not a bathroom.

This is a cafe in LA with a toilet theme. You sit on toilet bowls (maybe now guys will understand why you should put the seat down) at tile encrusted tables, and get served foods with poop joke names out of dishes that look like little toilets.

Get it? It’s a toilet BOWL.

The restaurant just celebrated it’s soft launch. Don’t think about that too hard.

When I saw the original article, I though this was probably something out of Japan. I mean, there is a precedent. Bill once received Japanese candy that you ate out of a little toilet bowl dish.

But no, this is in LA. The owner is from China, which is not the same thing, you racist.

It reminds me of the episode of South Park where a Japanese immigrant opened a City Sushi next to a Chinese immigrant’s City Wok, only, they couldn’t pronounce “city” right, and kept calling them “shitty sushi” and “shitty wok.”

The point is, poop jokes are universal. It’s the one thing that binds the world together in comedy.

Well, that and fart jokes. Look for my new fart-themed restaurant “Cut the Cheese,” opening this spring.

You may have noticed there haven’t been any YoungNotions posts this week. Don’t worry- there will be more funny coming at you next week. YoungNotions will be back.

But without me.

Bill will be taking over posting on a Monday – Wednesday – Friday schedule. The website is his now, and all things you do (or don’t) like from here on out will be entirely his.

I may guest post from time to time. Expect them to be rare, and not for a while.

YoungNotions started in March of 2011. It was a concept we came up with to keep writing. Keep trying to produce more work, keep writing and sharing funny stuff, regardless of how perfect it is or isn’t. It’s been our shared baby. Even though you see more content from Bill, making the website go, social media, sponsorship, turning YoungNotions into a brand… those have been primarily my drives for the site.

One of the things I have always loved about our marriage has been our ability to produce delightful comedy together.

When Bill and I talked about sharing a life, we decided that we weren’t going to have children. Instead, we were going to have comedy babies. And we did. This was one of our first. Together, we also gave birth to some Marriage web videos, some sketch work around town, shared hosting duties, and the Young and Fearless sketch comedy show.

YoungNotions has been a source of great pride for me. The blog has been a consistent Reapie winner, gets thousands of hits a month, and provides consistent topical commentary and satirical humor. It has readers from around the world.

As I said on Facebook earlier this week, the divorce overall has been simple. Dividing up our things is easy. Maintaining a friendship is natural.

But giving up on our shared creative projects… giving up on THIS has been hard. It seems silly, but I’ve cried over it’s loss in my life. It’s not just a personal pride, but a shared one that’s come to symbolize much of our marriage.

Bill and I talked about sharing it, continuing on with joint custody of our beloved child. But there have been some issues sharing it. It brushes up against buttons that affected our marriage, and we don’t want those same buttons to affect our friendship.

Besides, Bill lives in a way better school district.

So I’m leaving this blog in Bill’s incredibly capable hands. I’ll be around… I’m still managing the website, for as little as it needs managing. But on the whole, this baby is no longer mine.

Thank you all for reading the comedies here and feeding my baby with your comments and shares. Thank you for the kind words. And thank you so much for your continued support.

Make sure to keep reading this blog, and check out my current projects as well. I’ve got the site jenayoung.com, where I not only have all my productions and some of my other pastimes displayed, but I’ll post whatever random bits I happen to find worthy. Not just comedy, but inspiration, thoughts, opinions, and shows. Mostly shows, I bet.

Hell, maybe I’ll look for other writing opportunities. There are so many places looking for articles… places willing to pay, even.

Maybe I’ll even become a Cracked whore.

There will come a day when I’m not a regular contributor to YoungNotions. I may guest once in a while, possibly once a week or so, but this website is really Bill’s baby. It’s very kind of him to allow me visitation rights.

But we are still going to work together on comedy projects, including our rather popular “Young and Fearless” sketch comedy series.

I guess this one is also our baby.

And YOU can be a part of it, too.

Young and Fearless works on a collaboration basis. We accept submissions of sketches from contributors based on a theme. Bill goes through them, accepts or denies scripts based on comedy, fit, and whether or not the premise is sound.

He spends a couple weeks working with the writers to polish their sketches. We get a lot of new writers who have never written sketch before, and it’s a great opportunity to work with a writer who’s been in the sketch business for over 10 years.

After the sketches are finished, I work with a team of players to produce the sketches. A couple of my players have been in every show, and I usually get a few new people each production. I like working with my actor’s strengths, and generally cast on variety of abilities.

The next show will be “Young and Fearless: A Night at the Movies” November 15th at 10pm. We’re accepting sketch scripts for both live and film sketches (for people who want to produce their own film sketch to be shown at the theater. We have some resources available, but we do not generally produce film sketches). If you have an idea for a sketch that takes place in a movie theater, please submit your first draft by Monday, September 23rd to youngfearless@fearlesscomedyproductions.com.

It all starts with you, writers, so get those sketch ideas in! youngfearless@fearlesscomedyproductions.com

I grew up doing historical reenactment with my family. Not only was I involved with one of the more historical aspects of the Renaissance Festival (Irish Cottage),but we also did a lot of reenactment with the MN Scottish Clann Tartan. The Clann would travel to different festivals and Rendezvous, setting up canvas tents and demonstrating crafts of the time.

As a kid, I got to learn all sorts of old-school skills. Sewing, embroidery, singing folk tunes, carding and spinning wool into yarn. I loved helping out at the cooks fire most. Somewhere out there is a picture of 9 year old me being dangled over a HUGE cauldron.

Sometimes, I helped my dad play historical doctor. I learned a little bit about how licorice root was used as tooth brushes and mint for calming stomachs. One time, I got to play nurse on a battle field reenactment. My doctor father was running around helping the wounded. Set up ahead of time was a bit involving the fake amputation of a guy with a real prosthetic leg. It was fantastic.

As a reenactor, you get asked all sorts of questions. “Are you hot in those clothes?” “Where do you sleep?” “Is that a real fire?” As someone who has had to put up with stupid comments and questions, I have become a huge fan of the new web series “Ask a Slave”

I’m a little jealous that she gets to handle dumber questions than I did, though. Cause racism.

Go, watch, and learn a thing or two about how stupid we can be.

I remember when I was a little kid, and my peers all wanted to be astronauts. To go to space and eat space ice cream and do space things. We would come up with all sorts of things that had to be done differently in space, like drink water and brush your teeth.

It’s pretty much the coolest thing in the world.

But if you had told those kids how difficult one task was, they would have said things like “eeew!” and wrinkled their little noses, and giggle at the idea of it like the the 5-7 year olds that they are.

Apparently, on of the most complex things to do as an astronaut is go to the bathroom.

Well, shit.

Let’s start with the human body in space. Specifically the kidneys. One of the many things they do is act as a kind of “potty gauge,” to keep an eye on your bladder’s urine levels and let you know if you getting too full. One of the essential tools it uses to do this is gravity.

So when someone gets shot into space, the kidneys loose their grip on how full they are and start signalling to the rest of the body that they need to find a rest stop after about 2 hours or so. And it doesn’t matter how much mission control reminds them to use the potty before they go. Astronauts all become that whiny 4 year old in the back seat, crying “but MOM! I need to go to the bathroom NOW!”

Gravity is also an important factor in toilet function. We always talk about things going down the drain, but without gravity, there’s no “down” for things to go, and nothing to pull things into a container an hold them there.

There’s nothing to keep your shit together. Ahem.

So of course scientists have created very high tech toilets to circumnavigate this issue. For urine, they have a hose attachment with a light vacuum to pull the pee into a container. Each person gets a different personal funnel to use with this hose.

Apparently, even male astronauts are dudes at heart and continually ask for the largest funnel before getting properly fitted.

The shitter (technical term) also works off of a light vacuum technology. It’s a toilet seat with a 4 inch hole that you very carefully position your asshole (usually literal, but sometimes metaphorical) over. It’s such a precise piece of technology, that the astronauts have to go through classes on how to use it.

That’s right- astronaut potty training.

Come on, you guys. This isn’t rocket science!

I love all my childhood games. Up until 5 years ago, I still owned my apple IIe with 300 baud modem, and old floppy disks with games like Wishbringer, Oregon Trail, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.

International criminal and a snazzy dresser.

First off, I think my son’s childhood is a little less awesome for not having the Carmen Sandiego game show growing up. He told me they were going to start some kind of Carmen Sandiego cartoon, but I’m afraid it’ll end up like Dora the Explorer. Or Go Diego Go.

Go, Sandiego, Go. I can see it, and it makes me sad.

Luckily, it looks like they may be rebroadcasting old episodes. Which really pleases me. A lot.

To celebrate, I bring you a few emulators for the old classic games.

Let’s start with the 1990 version for you 90’s kids. It’s a good emulator, though the Java Applet is a little wonky if you scroll at all.

For you Nintendo kids, there is the slightly later (1992?) release of Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego. I played it a couple times as a kid, but it never felt quite right to me. Still, I won’t begrudge you your nostalgia if you don’t begrudge me mine…

One of my favorite sites, Virtual Apple, has the exact game from my childhood. As soon as I booted the disc and got those midi gunshots, footsteps, and police sirens, I was 8 years old again at Dad’s computer.

*sigh* I remember the days I used to be nostalgic.

One more note: I discovered you can follow Carmen Sandiego on Twitter. That just seems like cheating.

The internet is done. It has completed its task, to come up with the most awesome thing ever. We can all go home now. It’s over.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: Gif Dance Party.

It starts off with Smooch the bear and that 4 year old girl pumping it.

And then, you can add all sorts of animated gifs. People:

And stick figures:

And WFT?:

You can resize them, move them, and change the beat.

This is it. The absolute we can do as a people. The pinnacle of humanity. We may as well go back to flinging poo with the other moneys.

We’re done.

I just read an article where travelers who go to Jerusalem can get hit with Jerusalem Syndrome. These tourists become raving lunatics for a few days… “purifying themselves” by clipping nails and showering excessively, turning hotel bedsheets into togas, and going out to preach at people to go out and be kind to one another.

I can think of worse brands of crazy.

One person has been studying these cases and has divided the victims into 3 groups- previously crazy, previously extreme, and previously normal. They say that once the previously normal person is removed from the city, they go back to normal.

I’d never heard of this before, but in researching, discovered that The Simpsons did a bit about it where Homer suffered Jerusalem Syndrome, so it must be true.

Preaching the good word of sloth and gluttony.

There are a couple other cities that have syndromes. In Florence, Italy, there is Stendhal’s syndrome or Florence syndrome, “a psychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art.” We’re not talking those psychedelic blacklight posters they have in stoner shops. we’re talking art so beautiful and moving you go crazy.

There’s also Paris Syndrome, that specifically affects Japanese people. Paris is thought to be such a pinnacle of western civilization in Japanese culture that when Parisians behave in a way so very different than the romanticized ideal, they become disillusioned, hallucinate, and become paranoid to the point of locking themselves up, or even suicide.

It seems a little extreme, but have you SEEN French fashion?

Casual wear in France.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what Minneapolis Syndrome would look like… someone suffering suffering a shift in their built up reality so extreme they start hallucinating. What would be the signs?

I have a few ideas.

Only being able to talk in Uff-Da and You Bet.
A desire to make all food in casserole dishes with cream of mushroom soup.
Sudden ownership of a bike that you made yourself using silverware and recycled PBR cans.
Making very large versions of a thing and calling it art.
A sudden inability to merge.
Offering everything 3 times, like some kind of weird OCD.
Other symptoms that I’m sure people will comment with (and please do).

If you see someone exhibiting any of these symptoms, kindly suggest that they should see their nearest psych doctor, and then call them crazy behind their back.